California gets $79 billion a year from the federal government - nearly 40 percent of what it spends. The money goes to everything from highways to universities. So when the federal government sneezes, California catches a cold.

Washington's frantic debt-ceiling negotiations are about to let loose a $1 trillion-plus sneeze.

The cuts headed California's way are unknown as yet, because no deal has been reached in Washington to increase the debt ceiling and prevent the Treasury from running out of cash to pay its bills Tuesday.

But it is obvious from the cuts revealed so far in Democratic and Republican plans that "there are going to be a lot of them," said state Treasurer Bill Lockyer.

"If we reduce the deficit at the federal level, it's going to increase deficits at the state level," said Vin Weber, a former Republican member of Congress and GOP consultant. "That's not the objective of people, but it's going to happen, and they all know it."

Spending slashed

California already has slashed spending to reduce its own deficits and will have to cut more if federal funds dry up. The state now spends $208.5 billion a year, $79 billion of it from the federal government. It receives roughly 10 percent of what the federal government spends each year.

The basic outlines of the various plans would cut federal spending by roughly $1 trillion over 10 years. All the plans have ruled out additional tax revenue and cuts to the big entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They save these for a bipartisan super committee of Congress to find an additional $1.8 trillion in savings, through tax and entitlement reforms.

Until then, all the cuts would come from some combination of defense and domestic programs, known as discretionary spending because Congress votes on it each year.

"We can't identify the cuts yet because we don't know," said Rep. George Miller, a top ranking House Democrat from Martinez. "We've agreed to numbers that are very significant, in excess of $1 trillion."

About a third of all spending on domestic discretionary programs comes as grants to states, said Nicholas Johnson, vice president of state fiscal policy at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Spending limits

The initial plan by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., now the basis for negotiations, would save $2.2 trillion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It would impose separate limits on defense and domestic programs that would reduce federal spending by $840 billion over a decade.

Among the few specifics, the Reid plan would end subsidized student loans for graduate students and reduce subsidies to farmers.

California receives billions of dollars in block grants for education, child care, social services, aging programs and the like said Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project, a liberal group. Cuts at the federal level "inevitably will mean deep cuts in the money that flows through to the states," Ross said.

Budget analysts and government officials widely agree that the federal budget is on an unsustainable course. This year's deficit is projected to reach $1.5 trillion. Publicly held debt is expected to exceed the national income by the end of the decade.

The key deficit drivers are the Pentagon, Medicare and Medicaid; in addition, tax revenues are at their lowest level since 1950. Tax breaks, from ethanol tax credits to the mortgage interest deduction, cost more than $1 trillion a year.

If deficit reduction is concentrated on the domestic agencies that make up 19 percent of the federal budget, the cuts could be quite severe.

This year's House spending bills demonstrate the depth of the cuts needed to reach the budget targets laid out by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

'Unspecified cuts'

"The path to a genuinely balanced budget has to include entitlement and it has to include revenues," said Johnson, of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "Just doing everything with domestic discretionary spending is arguably a first step, but it's not a terribly great first step. These are all unspecified cuts. It's easy to wave your hands and cut discretionary spending, but when push comes to shove, do you cut the FBI? Do you cut elementary and secondary education, or food for pregnant women, or the National Institutes of Health? That's the kind of stuff that's funded through domestic discretionary programs."